BERKELEY, Calif. (RNS) When Rebecca Hensler's infant son died in 2009, she received numerous condolences from friends, colleagues and even total strangers she met online.

She knew their intentions were good, but their words weren't always helpful. And in the rawness of her grief, Hensler found some of them downright hurtful.

Hensler is an atheist, so when people described her three-month-old son Jude as being an angel, or part of God's plan, or "in a better place" than in his mother's arms, the pain sometimes overwhelmed her.

"(Atheists) don't think we are going to get to hold our children again," Hensler told a group of about 30 members of the East Bay Atheists, a monthly gathering of nontheists, where her descriptions of people's visions of her son as an angel drew a few gasps.

Personally I would find it a lot harder to bear if I thought there's some omnipotent being who thought it would be a good idea to kill my child, without even asking what I thought about it, and who's now getting off watching me grieve. It is one thing to get bad luck, it is quite another to know somebody did it to you on purpose.

English is not my first language. If you think I am being mean, ask me. It could be just a wording problem.

It's not hard for me to handle the issue of grief, but as the article suggests it s very hard to handle all the religious people forcing their bullshit into everything. I'm perfectly fine with there being an ned, but I'm not so happy when people prop up the people I miss as some sort of proof for them. I don't want to hear about where they think they are or what they think they're doing. especially because they don't say maybe, they say I'm sure. It really aggrivates me when people are so sure that whatever they can think of happening must be happening. And I don't think i'm the only one who has that issue.

We can handle grief, being alive requires it or you won't live long. What we can't handle is grievers >.>

I'm not a non believer, I believe in the possibility of anything. I just don't let the actuality of something be determined by a 3rd party.

Grief is what it is, the sadness of losing someone.
Attaching some deeper meaning to someone’s death and discussing their future in some castle in the sky won’t help those who stopped believing in the Easter bunny & friends.
What everyone needs, regardless of who or what they do or don’t put their faith in, is those around them to support them when they need it and to leave them alone when they want to grieve in solitude.

My take on it anyway…

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. Friedrich Nietzsche

When my grandfather passed this thanksgiving, people at work were pulling all the religious bullshit that was mentioned above. "oh he's with god now" "he's in a better place" "it's what god wanted' Here's an idea, What about what we want? I wanted my Gramps to pass quickly, without pain. Did we get that? no their "God" chose to give him dementia and slowly kill him from his brain eating itself. Their "God" took him from our family FIVE DAYS before his first Great Grandchild was born. i was literally sitting IN THE HOSPITAL, with my wife when i got the call. Because i lived on the other side of the country, with a wife and a baby on the way, i couldn't go to the funeral. but i guess "god" wanted me to suffer that for the rest of my life.

No. Grief is not hard for Atheists. Grief is hard for psycho's who think that their Sadist god controls their lives. Grief is easier for atheist taht know "Shit happens dude, its life".

Shock And Awe Tactics-- The "application of massive or overwhelming force" to "disarm, incapacitate, or render the enemy impotent with as few casualties to ourselves and to noncombatants as possible"

When my grandmother died, I was happy, because she had an infection doctors couldn't fight or something like that and she was suffering, so it was a good news that she died, as she wasn't suffering anymore, some say that I shouldn't feel good about it, but I do, I wouldn't dwell on wishfully thinking "if she were healthy she could have live longer" I mean, DUH!! but shit happens and she got her share, luckily it wasn't too long of an agony, that's good. And the best part, she was such a light in this world that her funeral was almost a party, people laughing because they remembered how a beautiful person she was.
When my grandfather died, I was happy because he was an abusive and rapist monster who made my mother and her sisters lives a living hell for more than 30 years and my own for 15 (because of the damage my mom suffered and I had to deal with). So a shadow passed away, that was good news too.
When my other grandfather died I was kind of sad, because he was a great mind, doctor in philosophy he was a great conversation, but I didn't enjoyed him as much as I should, but then I thought that he wouldn't like me to be sad for not sharing his thoughts, he would tell me that I should go out and make my own thoughts (by reading books, as he always thought studying was the best a person could do to improve his own life) so I went on and dedicated more into my studies, and the grief went away.

What I'm trying to say is that sometimes we are forced to feel bad for people dying, but I think that we should see death the same way we see the rest of the world, with reason and thinking on all the information we can about the person who died and ourselves, when we manage to see that, we can understand that death is not all there is, life goes on, and the dead will remain that way whether we cry or not, the best we can do to honour their memories is to live, not to fall into sadness.

(21-02-2012 11:12 PM)KVron Wrote: I found this article and wanted to share it with you:

Quote:Grief Without God Is A Challenge For Atheists

By Kimberly WinstonReligion News Service

BERKELEY, Calif. (RNS) When Rebecca Hensler's infant son died in 2009, she received numerous condolences from friends, colleagues and even total strangers she met online.

She knew their intentions were good, but their words weren't always helpful. And in the rawness of her grief, Hensler found some of them downright hurtful.

Hensler is an atheist, so when people described her three-month-old son Jude as being an angel, or part of God's plan, or "in a better place" than in his mother's arms, the pain sometimes overwhelmed her.

"(Atheists) don't think we are going to get to hold our children again," Hensler told a group of about 30 members of the East Bay Atheists, a monthly gathering of nontheists, where her descriptions of people's visions of her son as an angel drew a few gasps.

As I said in another post, I think religions and gods were invented as answers to this natural process of life... death.

When the LC showed up on the jobsite and made me a prophet back in the day, it came to me to question the purpose and origin of god. The answer is science. Partly to answer the question of death, but also lightning, trees, and duck-billed platypuses.

I don't have a problem with grief. All that I experience, is I; how can there be loss when I remain?